Laravel Schema Sentinel

Laravel Schema Sentinel is a premium database integrity tool designed to detect and resolve "Schema Drift"—the discrepancies between your migration files and your actual live database. Fully optimized for Laravel 13.x, with legacy support for 12.x and 11.x.

✨ Key Features

• 🛡️ Deep Drift Detection: Audits Tables, Columns, Types, Nullability, Defaults, Indexes, and Foreign Keys.
• 🚀 Virtual Migration Engine: Safely simulates your entire migration history in a shadow SQLite database.
• 🛠️ Automated Fixer: Generates bi-directional migrations (up() and down()) to bridge gaps while maintaining rollbacks.
• 🔍 Strict Mode: Identifies "unauthorized" DB changes or legacy artifacts not tracked in your code.
• 🧙 Interactive Wizard: Prompts you for confirmation before including specific fixes in generated migrations.
• 🤖 CI/CD Ready: Returns standard exit codes (0 for sync, 1 for drift) for automated pipeline enforcement.
• 🧩 UI Friendly: Programmatic API via the Sentinel Facade for integration with custom admin panels or Livewire.

📦 Installation

You can install the package via composer:

composer require clcbws/laravel-schema-sentinel

The service provider and facade will be automatically registered.

🚀 Usage

1. Terminal Interface (Artisan)

The primary way to use Sentinel is via the Artisan CLI.

Check for Drift

To see the gaps between your code and database:

php artisan schema:drift

Health Check (Doctor)

To verify your environment is ready for Sentinel:

php artisan schema:sentinel-doctor

Fix Drift Interactively

To generate a new migration file while reviewing each change:

php artisan schema:drift --fix --interactive

Strict Mode

To identify extra columns or tables in the DB that shouldn't be there:

php artisan schema:drift --strict

⚙️ Configuration

You can publish the configuration file using:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag="schema-sentinel-config"

The config file allows you to:

• Define Ignored Tables (e.g., third-party package tables).
• Add Custom Migration Paths for modular apps.
• Configure the Shadow Connection settings.

2. UI Integration (Controllers, Livewire, Blade)

Sentinel provides a powerful programmatic API via the Sentinel facade, allowing you to build custom database monitoring dashboards.

🎮 Controller Usage

Perfect for building custom admin APIs or JSON health endpoints.

use Sentinel\SchemaSentinel\Facades\Sentinel;

public function checkStatus()
{
    $diff = Sentinel::check(strict: true);

    return response()->json([
        'in_sync' => !$diff->hasDifferences(),
        'drift' => $diff->toArray(), // DTOs are arrayable
    ]);
}

⚡ Livewire Integration

Build a real-time "Database Health" indicator for your admin panel.

namespace App\Livewire;

use Livewire\Component;
use Sentinel\SchemaSentinel\Facades\Sentinel;

class DatabaseHealth extends Component
{
    public function render()
    {
        return view('livewire.database-health', [
            'diff' => Sentinel::check(),
        ]);
    }
}

🍃 Blade Templates

Quickly show an alert to administrators if the schema is out of sync.

@if(app()->environment('local') && \Sentinel\SchemaSentinel\Facades\Sentinel::check()->hasDifferences())
    <div class="alert alert-warning">
        <strong>🛡️ Sentinel Notice:</strong> Your database schema has drifted from your migrations. 
        Run <code>php artisan schema:drift</code> to review.
    </div>
@endif

🏗️ Architecture

Sentinel follows a strictly decoupled architecture:

1. Shadow Runner: Builds a "Shadow DB" by running all migrations.
2. Schema Parser: Normalizes both Live and Shadow schemas into DTOs.
3. Diff Engine: Analyzes the DTOs to find discrepancies.
4. Migration Generator: Translates the diff into valid Laravel PHP code.

📄 License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.

🤝 Credits

• Author: Ahtesham
• Company: Broadway Web Service

GitHub Metadata Suggestions

Description: 🛡️ Detect and fix database schema drift in Laravel by safely simulating migrations in-memory and comparing them to the live state.

Tags: laravel, database, schema-drift, migrations, dev-tools, automated-fixing, php, database-integrity